For some reason, I was wondering what the former Vice President of the United States, Dan Quayle was up to. So, to satisfy curiousity, I looked up his entry on Wikipedia, to find it hilariously defaced. Here’s a screenshot:

[Link to larger size]

From the first paragraph:

James Danforth “Dan” Quayle (born February 4, 1947) is an American politician and a former Senator from the state of Indiana. He was the forty-fourth Vice President of the United States under George H. W. Bush (1989–1993), and let me tell you something, this guy gives an amazing head, I’m telling you, you won’t find a better blowjob than the one Dan Quayle gives, it’s just so smooth and hot, and he’s willing to either swallow or to receive a big splash of cum in the face.

Awesome.

What a pandering jackass:

A Senate candidate has legally changed his name to Pro-Life and will appear on the ballot that way this year, state election officials say.

As Marvin Pro-Life Richardson, the organic strawberry farmer from Letha, 30 miles northwest of Boise, was denied the use of his middle name when he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006 because the state’s policy bars the use of slogans on the ballot.

Now, though, officials in the Idaho secretary of state’s office say they have no choice because Pro-Life is his full and only name. He says he will run for the highest state office on the ballot every two years for the rest of his life, advocating murder charges for doctors who perform abortions and for women who obtain the procedure.

“I think it’s just and I think it’s proper to have Pro-Life on the ballot,” he told the Idaho Press-Tribune of Nampa. “If I save one baby’s life, it’s worth it.”

[Link]

Maybe I should move to Idaho, run for Senate and change my middle name to “Fetus-Squisher”, just to balance things out. Motto will be, “If I can grind just one baby’s brains to butter, it’s worth it.”

I found this list of fifty people in Congress and the Senate that have received money from the RIAA for their campaigns very interesting and dismaying. Some people took more money than others and while some names in the list hardly surprised me, I was pissed to see (or annoyed by my naivety) politicians I was not expecting to be taking money from what I consider to be the single worst trade group/organized crime syndicate in recent history.

• Barack Obama - $2,000
• Hillary Rodham Clinton - $2,000
• John Conyers - $2,000
• Henry Waxman - $3,000
• Diane Feinstein - $4,000

I counted three member of Congress that represented districts in New York. Joseph Crowley and Louise Slaughter both taking $1,000 and Edolphus Towns receiving $1,500. I’m grateful that at least my district’s representative wasn’t on that list. Historically, I’ve always voted for the lesser of two evils when it came to deciding on candidates. I’ve always had a lot of respect for John Conyers and Henry Waxman. Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will likely get my vote for president in 2008, unless Al Gore runs. It’s disappointing to see that they are taking money from such slimy thugs.

I was reading a Wired article about the statistics of death in the United States compared to the “Politics of Fear” type shit you see on the news left and right. To believe the news, I’d be insane to not flee New York for the hills because Al Qaeda’s going to kill my skinny, white ass any second now and if I was smart enough to head for the mountains, I should probably dig a bunker because they’re going to nuke that shit too. However, Wired points out the actual statistical reality of mortality in the States, complete with a nice little color-coded chart á la Dept. of Homeland Security’s absolutely retarded threat advisory chart.

Sanely speaking, death by terrorism ranks second to lowest (lowest being that radical, extremist, Jihad-freak: Carbon Monoxide). The flu, a hernia, driving and just about everything else you might prefer to die of all rank much, much higher.

What caught my eye, was the fact that you’re more likely to be shot by law enforcement (3949) than killed by a terrorist (3147). I wonder what the numbers might rise to if being killed by the government, such as being shipped off to Iraq or being neglected in New Orleans after Katrina were to be factored in. Who would be the bigger killer of American citizens? Al Qaeda or the Bush administration?

I, for one, am completely sick of it.

Yes, it sucked—more than I’m going to bother to try and convey.

I was (and still am) in NYC. I had to live through that day, walk through that day (all the way to Brooklyn) and deal with the next few weeks of absolute discombobulation (which, to me, was the worst - that’s when everything sets in) as to what’s safe anymore.

I had to go to work the next day, convinced I was going to die. I rode the subways every morning and for the first two months, every time the train stopped in the tunnels, a cold sweat would kick in and I was hardly the only person.

It was horrible. I wish it hadn’t happened. It did and it’s certainly affected me, my decisions and how I view things.

But it’s been five years.

Still, every time I watch the news, there it is. 9/11 is invoked left and right. I see the plane crash or at least the smoking buildings in the media every day. It’s no longer a tragedy. It’s been co-opted as a tool for politics and media. It makes me sick.

This morning, I was reading an article about a CBS interview with “Tuesday’s Children“, a group to support and represent the children who lost parents that day. The reporter was asking how they felt now and the biggest complaint, round the room, was the constant barrage of imagery from that day. A quote:

The kids [..] told 60 Minutes some of the worst memories don’t fade because the media won’t let them. [CBS Reporter Scott] Pelley got an earful about showing those pictures of 9/11 over and over again.

“Even when you’re just sitting down like eating dinner and watching TV, you’ll just have a nice conversation and then all the sudden you’ll see like pictures of 9/11. You can’t escape it. It’s just like everywhere you go its always like you’re always reminded of it somehow even in the littlest thing,” explains Amy Gardner.

“They’re showing my dad’s death and everyone else here. It’s just really offensive. Every time I see it, it brings up so much and it actually really hurts,” says Erik Abrahamson.

That pretty much sums it up for me. Here’s the link that has video and a transcript.

9/11 is now a political tool. It’s a ticket-selling, ratings-boosting tool. It’s a tool for bloated, flag-waving idiots to show how patriotic they are to everyone else. It’s disgusting. It’s sad. It’s infuriating.

Happy 9/11, everybody.

Keith Olbermann’s Commentary on Donald Rumsfeld’s speech to the American Legion National Convention is such a well-crafted and thoughtful smack upside the head that I had chills reading the transcript. Read it!!!

I’m psyched to see that over the holiday weekend a US branch of the Pirate party was established, or at least got their website up and running.

I first read about the Pirate Party after it was first established in Sweden and made news in conjunction with thepiratebay.org’s trials, travails and public snubbing of US corporate bullying. My first thought was “Hell yes, but this party needs to be in the United States, the source of all unfair media restrictions, ridiculous copyright laws and all evils in between”. Thankfully and with hope, it has now arrived.

There’s not much going on yet and hopefully this won’t be one of those lame-ass, never off the ground, dead in the water, psuedo non-projects started mainly to garner attention. I find that really don’t care for the name, “Pirate Party”. While I understand the use and recent history concerning the term pirate in regards to digital media, it’s use is still to grey to me and given it’s historical connections with murder, theft and a whole mess of negative things, I question whether it’s appropriate for a party mainly concerned with copyright and usage reform. Sure it’s catchy, but in today’s buzzword-dependant media, amongst the non-7337, perhaps older and less media and tech savvy population, it sounds bad. Isn’t the whole purpose about freeing media, liberating ideas and fostering creativity? If so, why chose a word that denotes thievery?

Looking at the site, I was suprised to see that the pirate party also has branches in Belgium, Italy and France as well, which is great. I’d really like to see more countries join as well.

I’d have to say that the funniest, balls-out, career-making/destroying thing I’ve seen all year was Stephen Colbert’s monologue at the White House Press Corps dinner on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, I downloaded a BitTorrent of the speech he gave and was locked to my monitor, slack-jawed, incredulous and laughing my ass off at lines like:

“Mayor Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city. Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I would like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., The chocolate city with a marshmallow center.”
“And a graham cracker crust of corruption. It’s a mallomar is what I’m describing, a seasonal cookie. Joe Wilson is here, the most famous husband since Desi Arnez. And of course he brought along his lovely wife Valerie Plame. Oh, my god!
Oh, what have I said. I am sorry, Mr. President, I meant to say he brought along his lovely wife, Joe Wilsons wife. Pat Fitzgerald is not here tonight? Dodged a bullet. And we can’t forget man of the hour, new Press Secretary, Tony Snow. Secret service name, Snow Job. What a hero, took the second toughest job in government, next to, of course, the ambassador to Iraq.”

The insults and and cracks go on and on and leave the President and First Lady red-faced and visibly offended. The audience seems fluctuates between muttering indignation and not knowing whether or not it’s too inflammatory to laugh along at Colbert’s jokes. It’s obvious that everyone in the room is extremely uncomfortable. This is one video that has to be seen. Stephen Colbert has plenty balls.

Here’s links to low-rez WMV and a slightly higher-rez QuickTime video file. For best quality, you should go for the BitTorrent file, but you’ll need to have a client installed. I recommend Azureus. Lastly, you can always try searching YouTube for clips.